Friday, September 2, 2011

David B gingerly touches the third rail, again

Same-sex marriage is a big issue for a lot of people, both within and without the Mormon church.* (In fact, it’s become a big issue for a lot of non-Mormons with regard to how they view the Mormon church itself. But that’s a side issue for today’s topic.)

In pretty much every opinion poll of the US population that i’ve seen on the topic of whether same-sex couples should be allowed to get legally married, there’s been a consistent age breakdown: Those younger than me generally think there’s no problem with the idea, while those older than me think that it should never be allowed—my age seems to be the swing point for this effect.**

I haven’t seen any such polls of Mormons, though. That is, there are plenty of opinion polls that show that Mormons† are generally not in favor of allowing legal same-sex marriages, but there don’t appear to be any easily allowable breakdowns that show whether there’s an age effect among Mormons that parallels that of the general population.††

Anyway, i’m curious whether younger Mormons have different views on the subject of legal recognition of same-sex marriage than older Mormons do. Anyone know if there are any reliable poll numbers on this issue?‡

* And, as i’ve written before, i really don’t get why it’s such a big deal to so many Mormons, but I recognize that it is.

** And it’s not that people tend to be less likely to approve of it as they get older—i’ve been watching the polls on this issue for some years, and it really is my birth year that seems to be the most reliable inflection point.

† Important caveat: I’m talking only about Mormons in the United States here. While i’d be interested to learn the attitudes of Mormons outside of the United States (particularly in jurisdictions where same-sex marriages are legally recognized) on this subject, it’s beyond the bounds of what i can deal with in a single blog post.

†† I did find a report of a poll that reports on the breakdown of recent opinion polling on the subject among Utahns, and it found sharp differences by both religion and age, but it didn’t provide any sort of cross-tabulation ability to figure out what the effect of religion and age was.

‡ And yeah, Gallup may have it, but i’m not going to shell out cash to get past their paywall just to look into this. Maybe i should clarify: Anyone know if there are any reliable poll numbers available for free on this issue?